They said it was all nonsense, that the abduction of the governor’s daughter was more a hussar’s affair than a civilian’s, that Chichikov would not do it, that the women were lying, that a woman is like a sack—it holds whatever you put in it, that the main subject to pay attention to was the dead souls, which, however, meant devil knows what, but anyhow there was something quite nasty and none too good about them.
